A little talk about water

Southeast Alaska is a rainforest environment. It rains often; almost daily. More often than not we are damp. The irony is that despite our inability to dry off, that we’ve nearly run out of water.
I remember writing some weeks back about our newfound awareness of fuel use, and how easy it truly is to do without them. I cannot say the same for water, while some creature comforts are easily abandoned the desire to shower, wash our faces, boil water for tea, and flush the toilet, are not easily relinquished.
While we can have fuel delivered, and despite our hatred for hauling it, we can use diesel to run the generator or burn propane to create heat- we cannot have enough water delivered to do the dishes, make the coffee, take (even infrequent) showers, or even begin to think about fresh water laundry. We depend on the weather gods, those titans of wind and fog, to grace us with the one thing we dread most on our 12-hour sampling days: rain.
The pinnacle of our ‘water crisis’? Well… did I tell you we were going to be on TV? Because when the film crew of Jeff Corwin’s new ABC show Ocean Mysteries showed up, it was my job to tell them not to flush the toilet. More on that soon.